DiEM25 presents: A New, Rebellious Left for Germany, with Yanis Varoufakis — Berlin, Nov 13
Regardless of whether it’s a traffic light (SPD, Greens and FP), Jamaica (CDU, Greens and FDP) or Big Coalition between SPD and CDU once again, the next federal government will be neither rebellious nor progressive. The reason? Politics in Germany is visionless, conformist and without ambition.
So what next? We need a rebellious Left for Germany, and a voice in parliament to represent it. On November 13, DiEM25 and Yanis Varoufakis will present a rebellious Left for Germany. Be there!
A Rebellious Agenda for Germany – The Programme:
- Yanis Varoufakis, DiEM25 co-founder (in English), 11 goals: realistic, rebellious, radical
- What we need now – Julijana Zita, DiEM25 (in German)
- #WeAreMillions: Photo exhibition by the Courage Foundation and DiEM25
- Open The Black Boxes: Digital art installation by Danae Stratou
Where?
Cinema International, Karl-Marx-Allee 33, 10178 Berlin
When?
Start 7PM / Admission from 6PM
To protect the health of all participants, the 2G regulation applies. Admission only for vaccinated and recovered persons. For contact tracking purposes, we will ask for your address and telephone number when you place your order. The data will be deleted 4 weeks after the event.
Tickets
Tickets: 8€, concessions 5€, solidarity 15€. If the reduced entrance fee is too high for you, please write a short, informal mail to [email protected].
The War on Terror is put on trial in London through the Belmarsh Tribunal — October 22
Just after the bombshell revelations about the CIA plot to kidnap and assassinate WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange while he sought political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, the Progressive International comes to London with the first physical Belmarsh Tribunal. The intervention comes ahead of Assange’s extradition proceedings, which are set to continue in London’s High Court from October 27 to 28.
Inspired by the famous Russell-Sartre people’s tribunal, the Belmarsh Tribunal places the War on Terror on trial and holds the US government accountable for its war crimes. It is named for the London prison that has held Assange in permanent confinement for the last two years, as he faces extradition to the US, whose government plotted his assassination. The Belmarsh Tribunal will hold its first physical proceedings in London on October 22 at the Convocation Hall, Church House, Westminster, which was used for sittings of parliament during the Second World War.
The Belmarsh Tribunal will gather leading figures from politics, the law and journalism, to shed light at the US crimes that were revealed by WikiLeaks – torture, violence, illegal spying – but also to speak about the existing crimes of both US and UK against Julian Assange for exposing their illegal and unjustifiable actions.
Srećko Horvat, cabinet member of the Progressive International and one of the founders of the Belmarsh Tribunal, said:
“After the revelations about the murderous CIA plans to kill a publisher and journalist on British soil, not only the current US government but also the UK government must be held responsible for still keeping Assange in prison.
“The Biden administration should drop the charges against Assange and the UK government should free him immediately and end the suffering and torture of a courageous man who has comitted no crime. In a society in which telling the truth becomes a crime, we are all accomplices of crime as long as Assange is in prison.”
Jeremy Corbyn, Progressive International council member and member of the Belmarsh Tribunal, said:
“Wikileaks exposed crimes of US empire in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond. At the Belmarsh Tribunal, we will turn the world the right way up, placing crimes of war, torture, kidnapping and a litany of other gross human rights abuses on trial.
“The perpetrators of these crimes walk free, often still prominent public figures in the US, U.K. and elsewhere. They should be held accountable for the lives they destroyed and the futures they stole.”
Tariq Ali, member of the Belmarsh Tribunal and member of the original Sartre-Russell Tribunal, said:
“The Tribunal takes inspiration from the Sartre-Russell Tribunal, of which I was also a member. In 1966, Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre issued a call for a War Crimes Tribunal to try the United States for crimes against humanity in their conduct of the war in Vietnam. A number of us were sent to North Vietnam to observe and record the attacks on civilians. I spent six weeks under the bombs, an experience that shaped the rest of my life.
“The tribunal convened in Stockholm in 1967. The jury members included Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Isaac Deutscher, Vladimir Dedijer, Mahmud Ali Kasuri, and David Dellinger, among others. The aim was not legal but moral: to bring the crimes to the notice of the public.
“In London on 22 October 2021, we will do the same. Assange must be freed and the many crimes of the War on Terror placed centre stage.”
Register today to attend online!
SAVE THE DATE — COP OFF: DiEM25’s Alternative Climate Conference, Nov 14 – 16
As our planet’s clock approaches midnight, world leaders are set to converge next month in Glasgow at COP26 in order to come up with new excuses, new symbolic targets and new ways to silence the real progressive voices who oppose them.
Climate change is real, it’s here, and it’s an emergency. But history has shown us that those who were supposed to lead us out of this crisis are so blinded by capital and powerful private interests that they’ve decided Earth itself is a small price to pay for the yachts, mansions, private jets and record profits of the 1%. They will gather, mingle over dinner and drinks, and preach their commitment to insufficient goals and targets. Then fail to meet even those.
We refuse to sit in the back while no one drives. This November, join Noam Chomsky, Yanis Varoufakis, Caroline Lucas and many other progressives in saying: COP OFF!
In a three-day online event, DiEM25 will gather progressives from around the world to discuss some of the most pressing issues of our time, with ideas you won’t hear at COP26. Why? Because of the danger they pose to business-as-usual: real change, real goals and real solutions.
So, save the date! We are going live on November 14, 15 and 16. On the first day we will host two sessions, at 6PM and 8PM CEST; while on the second and third day we will host 3 sessions each: 4PM, 6PM and 8PM CEST.
The full programme will be announced soon, so keep an eye out for that.
COP OFF: DiEM25’s Alternative Climate Conference, will be livestreamed on DiEM25’s YouTube channel.
Join DiEM25’s Activist Circle on November 6! Find out more.
DiEM25 members in Turkey gather in Bolu to organise activities for the coming months
Members of DiEM25 in Turkey, the Turkish branch of DiEM25, came together in Bolu on September 18-19.
DiEM25’s meeting in Bolu brought our movement’s members together in a physical environment for the first time after the pandemic. We discused what activities to organise over the coming months, and also evaluated what we have done since the start.
We discussed issues like the climate crisis, migration, poverty and the destruction of democracy, from the local to the international perspective, issues which are all part of DiEM25’s agenda.
For the coming period, we will strengthen relations with the movement’s international structure and organise routine meetings.
Here’s a quick summary of what we decided:
- To realise face-to-face meetings; restarting the monthly forums as of October
- To work on the establishment of new local groups (DSCs), in 81 cities in Turkey.
- To plan tasks and work-sharing
- To carry out online activities with strong visual graphics
- To determine goals in order of priority, and periodically update them
- To thematically launch monthly newsletters
- To hold a meeting bringing local group coordinators together (September)
- To rework on the pending Manifesto for Turkey, Provisional National Collective formation (PNC) and social media activity
- To organise a major meeting in Istanbul (November 13-14 or 20-21)
Live in Turkey and want to get involved? Set up our own local group or connect with existing ones.
When saying No isn’t enough: what should progressives do?
The far-right and conservatives who support them nowadays are interested in the appearance form of political change necessary to keep the status quo essentially as it is: with themselves among the first beneficiaries.
The required style of leadership includes adopting a fundamentally anti-democratic posture against consultation, negotiation or debate and in favour of ’getting things done’ – easily achieved when there is a total split between what you say and what you do, since fundamentally, you have no intention of doing anything.
You have many powerful institutions on your side to help you to defend power as it operates now. None is more important than the media, especially what is left of mass media. You tell the people whose support you require what they wish to hear. This is what fake news is, that is when it isn’t involved in undermining the reputations and crushing the careers of Them.
As progressives, we have a completely different set of tasks ahead of us because we are committed to real systemic change on behalf of and in the interest of ‘the many’. Instead of the fantasy identification with the ‘strong man’ offered to humiliated individuals of a rightwing persuasion, the left need to persuade real people – a hugely diverse spectrum of people – that they can come together themselves and act effectively in their common interest. We have been hearing moving accounts of how our forebears, the Greenham Common women discovered organisational effectivity for themselves in last week-end’s joyous 40 years’ commemoration. They never pretend that ‘the journey’ was easy!
An early challenge for progressives is to know who we are. This is easy for the far right, such is their need to belong that it is immediately fulfilled by the fantasy monolith of the monocultural National Us. Once in place, it is just a matter of ‘winning’ against the existential foe, since ‘winner-takes-all’. So the only thing they do need to know is “Who We Are”. Compare the emergence of the Sardine movement. In the early months of 2020, people packed Italy’s squares in protest against Salvini’s lightning-speed construction of the Real Italian People whose interests he alone could defend against migrants, Roma and other existential enemies. They were united only in their opposition to Salvini’s definition of the Real People – after all weren’t they real too? So they shrugged, called themselves ‘The Sardines’ and got on with packing the squares.
Once the initial protest was over, however, it became apparent how difficult it was to convert a horizontal movement into an organisation that can move beyond just saying No, building on the different constituencies and capturing the various institutions that must be won over for progress in our complex political systems. For that what is needed is a two-prong exercise in extensive persuasion that happens to be the exact opposite in all respects to the structuring of the monocultural National Us. And that is no accident.
Just think of the fantastic work done by Theresa May’s oft-reiterated slogan, “Brexit means Brexit.” In one fell swoop it united their people into a monolithic phalanx without any need for debate and with any future debate ruled out of the question. The fact that no-one has known what Brexit means from 2016 to this day – as I write, the UK negotiates the unnegotiable re the borders and peace treaties of Northern Ireland – is immaterial. “Brexit means Brexit” told us “We know who we are and who our enemy is”.
Even better, in response, a thoroughly needled enemy closed ranks and refused to allow a single intelligent criticism of the EU – on its response to the financial crash, its treatment of Greece, its merciless ‘migrant problem’ or rising fascism in Hungary and other EU countries to which the EU has turned a blind eye – to cross its lips, immediately rendering itself unconvincing to any intelligent doubters, let alone skeptics whom they should have set out to persuade. Both sides played the same game – but only one benefited from saying No.
All the Brexiters who UKIPised the Conservative Party and then took over the helm of the British state had to do, was to polarise the country in the first place and make sure it stayed polarised. A binary referendum out of the blue was a good beginning, and the UK became considerably more polarised and fragmented once the Liberal Democrats (misleadingly named) proposed revoking the Article 50 that paved the way for it, thereby erasing it from history. Leavers of course responded by telling opinion pollsters that they would happily part with Scotland and Northern Ireland to boot, if they could just secure a No Deal that saw England turn its back on the EU and walk away.
Two-pronged approach
What should progressives have done to avoid this dead-end? Any institution containing large numbers of passionately committed and articulate leavers and remainers such as the Labour Party in opposition at the time could have modelled itself on the excellent Brexit citizens assembly organised by academic experts in deliberative democracy in Manchester at the end of 2017. They debated six key issues regarding what kind of relationship between Britain and Europe (in all its variety), people in the UK really did want (in all their diversity). Sortition was used to select people from both tribes reflecting the demographic make-up of the UK. The results were impressive, but the process – the reconciliatory sense of citizenship resulting from considered judgment – was a political game-changer. (It is noticeable that in 2019, the threat of the Archbishop of Canterbury conducting a similar Brexit citizens assembly caused panic among leading Leavers in the Tory Government.)
Before I am accused of reducing politics to talking shops (a professional liability at openDemocracy) let me quickly add that this alchemy of deliberative democracy is not enough on its own. Enter the second prong.
Real change comes about thanks to the action of real activists, so what we also need is an empowering, horizontal movement engaged in open-ended, democratic, pluralist growth. This is a democratising movement that skills people in crossing the barriers and boundaries erected by the proliferating enemy images of the right wing; skills in non-violent communication, in empowering organisation, deep democracy and mutual pleasure. These qualities are particularly important when it comes to persuading far right supporters to part with their aggrandizing fantasies.
Only a real experience of empowerment and community can oust these. Black Lives Matter leaders must be hugely encouraged by the waves of heartfelt support they have received from white supporters world-wide, not only for their own sake, but because this gives them a better chance to reach the millions of white supremacists in our midst. Which progressive, American or otherwise, can turn his or her back on the 73 million Trump supporters who still believe the election for president was stolen from them, and just say, ‘No!’ ? Luckily, Anthony Barnett reports on the interesting progressive left coalition that helped Biden win. Will this grow into such a movement for real change?
My favourite example remains the 15M movement (the indignados) and the role the PAH (anti-evictions platform) in particular played in the rise to fame of the great feminist municipalist and Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau. A decade later Carlos Delclos, a social movement expert living in Barcelona at the time summed up its vital features in my interview with him:
“ The PAH are in many ways the best migrant rights organisation in Spain, because they organise around a common need – housing – and say, “ I don’t care if you have got documents. If they try and evict you, I’m going to show up at your house to block it, if you will show up at mine when they try to evict us!…
That’s really the key to the success of the indignados and the situation in Spain right now, this ability to take hopelessness and make it about that vision! It’s not the vision of society that they propose ‘out there’, but the one that they put into practise which made the difference.
The key to the indignados was how they organised in the midst of the hopelessness dominant in Spain prior to their emergence, pushing developments in a virtuous, subversive, emancipatory direction, as opposed to this game of, “How can we play with xenophobia without being xenophobic? ” which was going on in the rest of Europe. They said, “We have to be the protagonists of our own change. We have to break down borders in our own practise.”
In conclusion, leftwing iconoclasm can be a wonderful thing. At its very best, however, it is equivalent to the consciousness-raising phase of feminism in which women realise that they share a legitimate interest and that it is theirs to fight for. Which is why, when I come across progressives or leftists saying No to speakers, books ancient or modern or art-works, or even toppling statues into the nearest river, I ask myself one question: What are you going to do next? Because it is the follow-up that really makes a difference, since this is where persuasion begins.
If no one has a clue or indeed much of an intention of working out who to persuade next, then I’m afraid I might suspect you of confusing progressive action with the winner-take-all competitive sport of neoliberal identity politics, whose forces bid against each other for jobs, department funding or the social recognition measured in Facebook likes and competing adoring tribes. This doesn’t lead to progressive change. It plays straight into the hands of the right and far-right.
See When saying No is not enough in Splinter Part.1 here and Splinter Part 2. here
This piece was originally published by OpenDemocracy.
Photo (c) Supporters of the ‘Sardine di Roma’, February 2020. | Pacific Press Media Production Corp. / Alamy. All rights reserved.
The US continues to blunder strategically — and so follows Europe
DiEM25 notes with concern the recent AUKUS trilateral ‘security’ partnership which has been billed as “sustaining peace and stability across the Indo-Pacific”.
This move will instead amplify existing tensions for the over 4 billion people that inhabit the region, and further the risk of environmental catastrophe by introducing extra nuclear capabilities to the area. Any accident involving nuclear submarines will decimate sea life and be the final nail in the coffin for the Great Barrier Reef and other fragile maritime ecosystems.
The triad are proud of the idea that Australia will become the latest shipyard for manufacturing weapons systems that offer little strategic benefits in the 21st century. The clear winner from procurement of these exorbitantly-priced nuclear submarines will be ‘defence’ corporations that will see their profits swell as public resources are diverted to their coffers.
Australia is witnessing the effects of climate change with more floods, record temperatures and devastating bushfires, all of which are set to worsen as the country could warm by “4℃ or more this century”. The urgent task of the Australian government must be to overhaul its insufficient climate policies that have seen little change under the leadership of Scott Morrison.
DiEM25 urges citizens to press upon their representatives to reverse course on militarisation of the Indo-Pacific and focus instead on expanding pathways to peaceful dialogue amongst nations as the only way to sustain peace and stability in the region.
DiEM25 continues to call for a peace-centric international policy from the European Union – and a halt to its blind support for US-led belligerence globally. This subservience to American hegemony is not by compulsion but by choice. European independence can only see the light of day if its integration evolves well beyond the elite-led intergovernmental hybrid that we witness today.
Anything short of a common treasury – which implies a large pan-European debt – and a sovereign parliament elected transnationally, means that the ‘Union’ will remain subservient to the passions of the United ‘States’. Sadly, European leaders have elected to place the narrow interest of elites ahead of populations. This strategic error will lead to further European entanglement in American imperial disasters.
Simply not good enough: a look at the policy programmes of German political parties
Angela Merkel’s chancellorship is coming to an end and it seems that the leaden atmosphere of her time in power has rubbed off on political parties in Germany. There is no vision, no ambition to change anything fundamental, no sense of a new beginning.
Yet all this is so desperately needed. We need a common major project to rebuild the infrastructure and the economy, for full employment and recovery. We need a Green New Deal.
We have looked at the election programmes of various parties and this is what we found: what they offer is simply not good enough. But of course there are differences. Here is a comparison of their programmes with 6 demands from DiEM25’s Green New Deal for Europe.
Tick -> covered. Till -> partly covered. Dash -> not covered
In Germany, Europe and beyond: we are working for the world of tomorrow!
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that our problems are global. Only together can we solve them, there is no way around that. The political missteps during the pandemic have also shown that established parties are not capable of solving the dilemma. The climate crisis and global inequality have not gone away either.
We need a new era of change in the political system. We need a common major project to rebuild the infrastructure and the economy, for full employment and recovery! We have to reach the climate protection goals and create millions of good, secure jobs.
A new dawn, a voice for worker
Building on the Green New Deal for Europe, in November we will present DiEM25’s Electoral Wing in Germany. A political counter-proposal with the ambition to rebuild the social system and the economy and to fight for shared prosperity and social security. A party in Germany, anchored in the European movement DiEM25 and part of the Progressive International.
We need you to change European, national and local politics. Join here and participate!
Germany: will the federal election bring any positive change for Europe?
It’s now down to Olaf Scholz vs. Armin Laschet. Who will be the next chancellor in Germany? In most polls, Scholz’s party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), has a slight lead over Armin Laschet’s conservative CDU. But with only a few days to go, one poll showed that 40 percent of voters are still undecided. The race is open.
The real drama will begin after the election. To form a majority in parliament, both parties would need to form a coalition – which might take months. A three party coalition with the Greens and the neoliberal FDP is the most likely outcome, led by whomever wins the election.
If the Left Party will re-enter parliament (they’re currently polling six percent, while the threshold is five), a coalition of Olaf Scholz’s SPD, the Greens and the Left Party (called Red-Red-Green, or R2G) might also be possible, at least on paper. Both Scholz and Annalena Baerbock, the candidate of the Greens, have not ruled out such a coalition. But they demand a commitment to NATO from the Left party, which the Left party does not want to give. So while R2G might be an option, it’s more likely that Scholz will use the possibility of R2G as leverage in coalition talks with the FDP.
Whatever the outcome, the big question for DiEMers is: Will the election bring change for Europe? With 16 years of Angela Merkel coming to an end, will Laschet or Scholz be any different? Will one of them finally stop holding Europe hostage by blocking any meaningful reform?
The short answer is: No, probably not.
Why? Because they will have no mandate for any reform. Europe is non-existent in their election campaigns. They are no eurosceptics, either. Both candidates are labeling themselves as pro-European – Laschet sees himself in the tradition of Helmut Kohl, while Scholz is praising himself for the Recovery Fund. But none of them are campaigning on European issues. Laschet’s CDU has already ruled out a fiscal union and promised a quick return to European deficit rules, while Scholz is simply campaigning on the claim: “Chancellor for Germany”
Even if one of them were to tackle progressive European reform – a real Green New Deal, proper Eurobonds or even a European constitution – he would have a powerful coalition of the FDP, convervative newspapers like Bild, FAZ and Welt and the German industry against him. We cannot expect much help from the Green Party, either. They’ll accept anything as long as they can govern and can have a few green projects. That, at least, will require suspending or bypassing the debt break for green investments, setting a precedent for other European countries to do the same.
What will happen when the unexpected happens?
So we should not expect much. Both Laschet and Scholz are conservatives. Like Merkel, they are Europe’s false friends. They wear a pretty European dress, but their politics directly lead to the disintegration of the EU. And they have neither interest nor a mandate to change German politics one bit.
So the more interesting question for DiEMers might be: What will happen when the unexpected happens? How will Laschet or Scholz react to the next crisis? A crisis that surely will come, given the state of the EU. For as long as possible, we will see Merkel 2.0 – preserving the existing order, managing the madhouse. But what if one day the forces of disintegration become too severe to handle?
Then, it will no longer be about Laschet vs. Scholz. It will be people vs money.
In this fight, one scenario is that the people of Europe rise up and use the fall of the European Union to get rid of the old and begin something new: A European Spring, based on real democracy and shared prosperity. That’s the dream…
But right now, the more likely scenario is rather a nightmare. A too big to handle disintegration of the EU would open up room for what Naomi Klein describes as shock therapy: More depoliticised, technocratic governments, rushed trade treaties, leaving markets open but parliaments closed. During the Euro crisis, German politicians and their allies demonstrated that they don’t care much about democracy when push comes to shove. Neither Laschet nor Scholz will be any different.
Signing a petition is not enough
So what can we do, as DiEMers, in Germany and Europe? In a nutshell it is this: Radically challenging the existing order and aiming for power and democracy.
In practice, this must mean two things. First, our activism has to become more radical. We cannot challenge power by signing a petition. It also needs to become more targeted, for only then it becomes a threat to the existing order. #MakeAmazonPay was a first step in this direction. For some people, the thought of more radical, more targeted activism might be uncomfortable – it is for me, anyway. But what is the alternative? Obedience until the end?
Second, our activism has to aim for power and democracy. Either by winning power in elections, or by reclaiming and occupying spaces, neighbourhoods and cities, powered by a new, open, participatory democracy. Or a combination of both. The upcoming launch of the DiEM25’s electoral wing in Germany and the DiEM25’s Peoples Gatherings are a step in this direction.
For both, it needs your initiative and courage. Don’t wait for the outcome of the German election, it won’t change the doomed curse of the EU. Change only happens when people like you rise up because they are fed up with injustice across the world.
Art and culture in autocracies that pass for democracies
The COVID-19 pandemic generated uncanny circumstances being experienced worldwide, after all the tragic consequences of wars in the 20th century. The everyday environment is far from the common social-economic order. People of all classes are trying to cope with physical restraint, spiritual loneliness, global uncertainty, and anxiety about the future.
The Post-Truth regime we’ve been witnessing for over a decade, combined with the pandemic, has further complicated our realisation, perception, awareness and knowledge. Political and economic activity is being structured according to a new impasse.
What does this naked and absolute truth we experience mean for the future? This is the most asked question today in the global arts and culture scene: the most omnipresent and operational human action versus economics and politics.
Post-truth is understood as the modification of the meaning of truth, a system which aims to capture political and economic power. The current concerns about global economy, politics and culture that are under the unavoidable hegemony of post-truth, are forcing us to re-think the relevance of truth – which is the main concept and goal of contemporary art – and the relevance of today’s Relational Aesthetics productions.
Artists, art critics, academicians and experts working in this field are facing a new challenge to communicate with the pandemic-stricken public through contemporary art. The main setback in this field is the difference in political- social-economic orders, despite the growing controlling power of capitalism.
The truth is that there are countries and regions which respect democracy, justice, human rights etc., and there are countries that are far removed from these indisputable values. To my regret, I speak from a country [Turkey] with a damaged democracy that embraces post-truth. As Jürgen Habermas put it: “A ‘post-truth democracy’ […] would no longer be a democracy.” *
In non-democratic systems, there are a series of adverse issues that relate to the relevance of contemporary art and culture productions, as well as activities of artists towards their audiences. Mass media collaborates with ruling powers which offer limited democracy, all the while convincing people that they actually live in a democracy. The culture and art industry, with its populist, financially dependent systems and inevitable PR backing, promises an almost selfless service to the society of the spectacle, which simply produces illusions. Skeptical or dissident artists are confronted with this ongoing complexity.
In 2016, in Berlin, during my participation in ‘Soul for Europe’, I had the opportunity to justify the ongoing power of contemporary art and culture production in countries with limited democracy. I claimed that contemporary artists, art experts, artistic and cultural activities in Turkey (and in similar countries in the region), private institutions or individual initiatives, are effective in fulfilling cultural aims and intentions, such as:
- a clear and unbiased vision towards democratic transformation
- freedom of expression and communication
- respect for pluralism, human and gender rights
- responsibility on ecological problems
- development of public awareness
Visual artists with their aesthetically qualified, conceptually competent artworks, are widely and strongly enriching visual productions, and women artists are at the forefront of this. But, how artists profit from their productions, or rather how they survive, remains a crucial question.
Most artists work at universities, graphic design companies or public art studios. A small number of artists are supported by their families or other private income. Private galleries occasionally employ curators. However, museums or private art and culture venues, are not enough to meet artists’ employment demands, not to mention that these often prefer to run their institutions with low-wage policies.
Under the current political and economic conditions in Turkey and in the region, it may be difficult to continue to strengthen socio-cultural and artistic endeavours. Artists are today looking for opportunities to live and work abroad in the EU, but this too has become almost impossible under pandemic conditions. Fortunately artists and art professionals can see, categorise and mark the apparatuses that serve post-truth regimes.
These adverse apparatuses show the affluent life of the privileged classes as the only goal of life, with productions used as “a must” towards this goal. These institutions intervene into the organic communication between creative people and the public with the intention of converting every piece of this communication into money. They canalise existing art forms and their critical information through alien systems, and load them with contents that don’t belong to them. They convert the quality of artworks, which aim to reach very large audiences, into profit.
Here, we need a new approach to the global art market; to underline the border between the socio-political-cultural value and the market value of artwork. This is more essential in non-democratic countries where only decorative creations can be exhibited and marketed. In the post-truth pandemic order we live in, especially in the countries where democracy is damaged, Relational Aesthetics products, which make critical and oppositional visual productions between the truth regime and the Post-truth regime, are seen in opposition to traditional identity, nationalism, religion and Neo-capitalist mass-culture.
If we consider that Relational Aesthetic artworks have a function within the visual aggression of Post-truth, it is evidently the enigmatic visual language that penetrates into the subconscious of society and provokes awareness. However, in many countries these productions are abused by censorship and vandalism. But these attacks are not preventing the continuity of art production. The curators who stand by artists and their works inevitably take a political stand and provide opportunities for this continuity.
In such hostile political environments, a counter-position is created by empowering art and culture workforces through the founding of NGOs, as well as art and culture initiatives at the global level. Global artist and art-experts residency programs, and artistic and cultural projects funded by public and private initiatives, are the main strongholds of sustainability.
Since 1990, exhibitions, symposiums and workshops organised in Turkey, the Balkans, the Middle-East and South Caucasus in collaboration with EU institutions, significantly reflected the will and vision of collaboration in arts and culture. Throughout the 1990’s EU culture policy applications didn’t only provide opportunities for artists and curators seeking new audiences and markets, but also supported cultural ventures in non-democratic or semi-democratic countries.
However most of these countries are still exposed to political and economic transformations and blockages. This means that the art and culture workforce is still seeking new allies and partners to tackle and overcome the grandeur of the task. The EU’s distribution of knowledge and funds for multicultural exhibitions into region or city-based locations also played a role in reducing the authority of modernist state-controlled art and culture structures based on local, national or 20th century Eurocentric proclamations.
Turkey’s art and culture developments since the 1980’s is an example of this significant role. The intense art exchange within the region, where Istanbul is the center of early accomplishments in art and culture, consists of multilateral exhibitions, roundtable or symposium meetings and artist residencies.
Currently two directions influence art and culture policies in Turkey: One of them is the prevailing official culture policy trapped into Modernist ideology, mixed with nostalgia to an illusory İslamic art and culture. The other is in correlation with private sector investments, the irrepressible dynamism of contemporary art-making and cultural activities through international exchange, communication and market relations.
I think that the EU made efforts to fulfil its function of preserving cultural diversity, while at the same time providing equality in the systems of communication and exchange. However, there is a big problem in this function. The EU’s policy of updating art and culture policies in countries experiencing political and economic turmoil has fissures that need to be revised.
For instance, the mainstream international art and culture industry has very strong links with private international enterprises. It comprises a huge and complex network of artists, galleries, media, curators, collectors, private and official institutions. It is therefore an impenetrable entity that has its own rules and concepts and does not like to be manipulated by any other power. It has its own power and all the actors of the system enjoy this power.
The other system includes official institutions, museums, universities and state/nation political policies. The interests of this system are founded in nation-state ideologies, which is another unit one cannot easily penetrate into. Another issue are the dynamics of art itself. Artists are independent, free, and want to do whatever they believe in.
If there is a next future, the EU art and culture policy should consider its interest in democracies in bordering territories, and support the dissident art and culture producers living in autocracies.
Beral Madra is an art historian, critic, curator and elected member of DiEM25’s Coordinating Collective.
Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash